This is a sponsored post in collaboration with the Washington State Department of Health and as always the ideas in this post and on my blog are my own.
A couple months ago, our family cheered along with nearly 70000 fans as we watched our Seattle Sounders in their historical win in the Concacaf tournament. We also hung out with family and friends. Our kids played soccer with their rec teams and at school. Our kids kept going to their sports, lessons and school. And things are now starting to feel almost pre-2020 again. One way we feel comfortable to be able to do so many things again is that we test at home and our school has had COVID-19 testing as part of the Learn to Return program. Because people might have COVID-19 without feeling symptoms, knowing our current COVID status helps us decide if we want to go somewhere, or if we should be around elderly family members too.
Did your school have COVID-19 testing too?
I signed my kids up to be tested at school with the Learn to Return testing program because we already test at home and extra testing seemed like such a good idea. I know it helped at our school this year. A month or so ago, we had a bit of an outbreak in my kids’ classrooms. Kids were tested at school and exposure notices were sent home. Our school implemented masking until the cases went down. Both my kids were exposed but maybe because they were wearing KN95 masks and everyone was encouraged to test to find COVID-19 positivity early, our family remained negative for COVID-19. As of today we have not yet tested positive and we have probably tested nearly 100 times.
So what are we doing this summer about COVID-19
We are going to follow along with recommendations from the Washington State Department of Health and we’ve enabled WA Notify on our phones. We will do as many things as we can this summer outdoors. And we will continue to test at home every week or so to help do our part in helping stop the spread of COVID-19. Are you testing at home this summer too?
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)